MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Addresses NBC Scandal On Air, Commends Ronan Farrow’s Weinstein Reporting

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took a moment tonight to address the elephant in the room: the scandal currently facing NBC amid serious allegations in Ronan Farrow‘s new book.

Hayes reflected on how disturbed he was about the NBA bowing to pressure from China before saying, “The insidious destructive force of the path of least resistance is everywhere you look. Heck, I feel the tug of it myself as my own news organization is embroiled in a very public controversy over its conduct.”

Hayes recounted the allegations in Farrow’s book, including that NBC News killed his Harvey Weinstein reporting.

“In Farrow’s view, he was unable to break through what was effectively a conspiracy of silence from NBC News management,” Hayes said. “NBC News vigorously denies this account. The president of NBC News, Noah Oppenheim, called Farrow’s book a conspiracy theory in a memo sent out today, citing an internal NBC News investigation that concluded that the extremely upsetting allegations against Lauer were not known internally.”

Hayes did make a point of praising Farrow’s reporting on Weinstein:

“Ronan Farrow walked out of NBC News after working on the Weinstein story, and within two months published an incredible article at the New Yorker that not only won a Pulitzer, but helped trigger a massive social and cultural reckoning that continues to this day. It is the kind of journalism that you want to do as a journalist, that everyone who works in this business should want to facilitate. Of course, there’s a reason it took so long for the true story about Weinstein to be told, for the many allegations of him to stay locked in a vault. And that’s because time and again the path of least resistance for those in power was not to cross Weinstein or his army of friends and lawyers. Same goes for the many, many, many other powerful predators that we’ve come to know about. The path of least resistance is always there. Beckoning seductively, with an entirely plausible cover story, you’ve got bigger fish to fry, this isn’t the hill to die on, the story isn’t ready. But, of course, it’s the very ease of that path that makes it the enemy to the kind of work we, as journalists, are supposed to do.”

You can watch above, via MSNBC.